Google has announced that small businesses in sections of Kansas City can subscribe to high-speed Google Fiber Internet, giving them a 1G bps connection to and from the Internet.
This is roughly 100 times faster from the Internet to the premise than the average link in the United States, so it’s a major speed improvement that is especially important for data-centric businesses.
Moreover, transfers to the Internet are at the same speed, or about 400 times faster than average. This allows businesses to share data and collaborate on work, making areas with fiber for businesses very attractive to technology-oriented companies.
“Whether a business uses their connection to move to the cloud, get closer to customers on Hangouts or bring more transactions online, we’re excited to see what happens when Kansas City businesses say farewell to slow speeds and hello to all the tools and technologies that they need to grow,” according to the announcement post from Google.
The service will initially be limited to just a few districts Google currently covers on both the Missouri and Kansas sides of the metropolitan area that is divided by the Missouri River. But Google is expected to rapidly expand the service throughout Kansas City. Businesses will be charged $100 per month, with options for fixed IP addresses at a small premium. This price has a one-year guarantee.
Businesses that need to work with distant partners are particularly impacted by the speed increase, especially in the multimedia business. Companies that specialize in video special effects or rendering techniques deal with hefty files that can take up a lot of bandwidth on the Internet. With movies taking as much as 1TB of data, slow transfers interfere with operations.
Teri Rogers, CEO of Hint, a multimedia company in Kansas City, Mo., gave a good perspective of the impact of fiber on her type of business. She said, “We move large amounts of media content back and forth to Los Angeles and Chicago, and it takes forever. We created a 3D model of the original Union Station [in Kansas City] and it took us over 50 hours to render it, mainly because of slow interconnect.”
“We are signed up for fiber and waiting for the rollout over here in Missouri. This is very exciting. It will speed up our business tremendously and be a huge competitive advantage.” She added that they have an engineer with fiber to his residence who prefers working from home because of the connection speed. Google’s fiber program is starting to spur competition. AT&T is planning to rollout fiber in Kansas City, according to Rogers.
To put this all into perspective, Singapore Internet Service Provider ViewQwest just announced that it will start deploying 2G bps residential service early next year while there is competition Internet service providers offering 1G bps service there. In South Korea, 1G bps fiber service is available from multiple ISPs in the major cities.